Microsoft Power Apps among the leaders in low-code development platform space: New analyst rankings

Forrester's latest Wave ratings are out for "low-code development platforms for professional platforms", and Microsoft Power Apps is among the leaders.

Power Apps has the largest market presence among the leaders, but the analyst firm rated Mendix and Outsystems as having stronger current offerings. ServiceNow rounded out the leader group with slightly lower overall scores.

"Microsoft brings a broad toolset, clear vision, and many routes-to-market," wrote the authors. They noted that Microsoft's strategy of aligning Power Apps with a range of their other cloud products and services including Office 365 and Azure as "powerful and unique". And while the analyts' view of the offering is largely positive, they did criticize the cumbersome licensing and lack of options for running on-prem or in another cloud.

In the more granular analysis, Forrester rated Microsoft near the top in many categories. One notable deficit was in "Tooling for app testing, deployment, and management" where Power Apps scored only a 1.7 out of 5, well below other leaders. Microsoft has been on this list in past years, including Q1 2019.

What the vendors say

The leaders each used the report's publication as an opportunity to note their success and offer some general outlook.

ServiceNow